It took us a while in post to arrange the shots in a way with out breaking the rules, as we wanted to use several different shots of the break up with dialogue, but had to use the audio from the actual shot rather than laying a new shot over the audio from a previous take. As the dialogue wasn't exactly the same and consistent for each shot. This made it difficult but we did eventually sort it out, so it worked okay. It was in the post- production stage that we lost a lot of confidence in our film. Watching it back, it didn't seem to have enough going on in it and wasn't really interesting enough to capture an audiences attention the way we wanted it to. I think it could have worked fine as just a standard film, with some music and more complex editing, but as a Dogme 95 film, the storyline wasn't interesting enough. With films that aren't driven by action sequences, or special effects, it's the actual characters and storyline that drive the film forward, you need more complexity to the storyline and to the characters to make it entertaining to the viewer. It would have worked so much better if we'd added more characters or background story to give it some sort of extra dimension.
Editing took longer than what I'd expected. Because Dogme 95 films are so simply edited, with no fancy editing, we expected to get it done within a day, but that wasn't the case. I think, in some ways, it made the editing harder. Cutting it right, without overlapping the audio and still getting a sooth edit was really hard.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Reflection
After we saw the brief, the first idea we had was to do a film about an alcoholic who gives up drink. Soon after we started discussing this idea we heard another group talking about how they were going to do a film about someone giving up cigarettes, so we decided to do something different. We soon came up with the idea of a young guy who decides to break up with his boyfriend.
Although we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do and achieve with the film, when it came to post we realised that it wasn't really what we had had in mind at all. We wanted to focus on the character and his emotions and show the difficulty he was going through, but when we started to watch our footage back, we started to realise the film was lacking somewhat. We wanted there to be a connection with the character, so we wanted to just focus on the one character, but I think, really, the film needed more complexity. Most Hollywood films these days can have a very simple, and overall, boring storyline because they can just make up for it with special effects and action sequences to keep the audience gripped and interested in the film. Obviously, with Dogme 95 you can't do that, so you have to make the storyline gripping and interesting, just to keep the audience interested. I don't think we really anticipated how other people outside our project would receive our film, not knowing the back story or what's really going on.
If we filmed another Dogme 95 film, I'd definitely spend more time planning the actual shots, just to make the editing easier. We had a lot of trouble lining uo the shots without it looking odd, due o the lack of consistency with the dialogue. I'd also work on the story of our film, add in more characters, a background story and more of a resolve at the end. Overall, I'm not particularly happy with our film, but have learned a lot about Dogme 95, and learned that making an entertaining Dogme 95 film, such as the one we watched in class, is actually a lot more challenging than what I'd thought.
Although we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do and achieve with the film, when it came to post we realised that it wasn't really what we had had in mind at all. We wanted to focus on the character and his emotions and show the difficulty he was going through, but when we started to watch our footage back, we started to realise the film was lacking somewhat. We wanted there to be a connection with the character, so we wanted to just focus on the one character, but I think, really, the film needed more complexity. Most Hollywood films these days can have a very simple, and overall, boring storyline because they can just make up for it with special effects and action sequences to keep the audience gripped and interested in the film. Obviously, with Dogme 95 you can't do that, so you have to make the storyline gripping and interesting, just to keep the audience interested. I don't think we really anticipated how other people outside our project would receive our film, not knowing the back story or what's really going on.
If we filmed another Dogme 95 film, I'd definitely spend more time planning the actual shots, just to make the editing easier. We had a lot of trouble lining uo the shots without it looking odd, due o the lack of consistency with the dialogue. I'd also work on the story of our film, add in more characters, a background story and more of a resolve at the end. Overall, I'm not particularly happy with our film, but have learned a lot about Dogme 95, and learned that making an entertaining Dogme 95 film, such as the one we watched in class, is actually a lot more challenging than what I'd thought.
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Crew Roles
Jemma Cleave - Sound designer/Producer
Lucy Sutcliffe - Editor
Leah Mead - Director/Camera Op
Lucy Sutcliffe - Editor
Leah Mead - Director/Camera Op
Pre-produciton
After we had decided and agreed on an idea after hearing the brief, we booked out a Sony Z1 camera, zoom recorder and rifle mic for filming and started on the script.
We knew from the start that we wanted the break-up to be done over the phone and not between two characters, face-to-face. We wanted to focus on expressing the hardship this character was facing over deciding what to do and how he was going to do it and showing how difficult it was for him to do.
We storyboarded a very basic idea of what we wanted, just to document what was going to happen.
We arranged an actor to act in our film, and set a day to shoot the film. Because we were only using 2 locations, we decided to do all our filming in one day to allow more time for the editing.
Production
We had some problems during the production process. Our initial actor didn't turn up for the shoot, so we had to quickly organise someone to fill in just before the shoot.
The actual filming process went quite smoothly. We all knew what we had to do and got on with it quite efficiently. One problem we did encounter was the lack of light in the hallway for the shot of the character walking up the stairs. There wasn't really any access to natural lighting in that area of the house, and only very dim light bulbs, so that shot is much darker than we desired.
The actual filming process went quite smoothly. We all knew what we had to do and got on with it quite efficiently. One problem we did encounter was the lack of light in the hallway for the shot of the character walking up the stairs. There wasn't really any access to natural lighting in that area of the house, and only very dim light bulbs, so that shot is much darker than we desired.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Confessions
We used a light from one of our phones whilst filming the credits on the stairs. The room was too dark to get a good quality shot, so we decided to use artificial lighting. We discovered that we could create quite a good effect by lighting up each stair by panning the light back and forth to light the stair up, and then darken it again to move on to the next one.
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